THE TALES OF HOFFMANN
Opera Hong Kong
Opera Hong Kong and the annual Le French May Arts Festival have again teamed up to present one of the best-loved works from the catalogue of the French musical stage.
Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann opens on May 23 for a run of three performances in an Opéra de Monte-Carlo production, with Emmanuel Joel-Hornak conducting an international cast of leading singers, the Opera Hong Kong Chorus and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta.
Reflecting its billing as an "opéra fantastique", The Tales of Hoffmann is an immediately approachable work that has been delighting audiences since its first performance in 1881 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
The three acts, encased in a prologue and an epilogue, are each based on one of E.T.A. Hoffmann's stories, in which the German author himself appears as the alcohol-oiled central figure who faces amorous challenges and resident evil from tale to tale. With the singers performing multiple roles, the plot may get a bit convoluted, but the music's easy charms smooth everything out.
You may find yourself humming along to several numbers written for this opera before they became well-known as stand-alone pieces.